Securitization, Urban Policy and “The Community”

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COLLeGIUM: Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 11

ISSN:

1796-2986

ISBN:

978-952-10-7725-8

Abstract:

This article places recent debates about community cohesion and securitization in a wider context; it situates assumptions about the “threats” posed by particular communities against the backdrop of urban policy and urban social change in the UK. It reveals the way marginalised “communities”, minority ethnic group and white working-class, were imagined in New Labour’s urban regeneration policies and how they are invoked in the more recent Conservative-led coalition’s proposed social and regional policies and their accompanying rhetoric. The discussion also makes an assessment of the likely impact of recent economic and social policies for neighbourhood change, instability and “security”. It is argued that the ways urban communities have been conceptualised reflect, at best, a neglect of the structural determinants of urban social life and at worst a deliberate attempt to downplay such concerns underpinned by a deeply rooted preoccupation with the problem of rather than the problems faced by marginalised communities.